The Devil's Grip
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Wickedly dark with a mystical edge, this story of an Italian love affair gone bad captures the irresistible pull of toxic relationships—from the acclaimed author of Carnality.
A woman arrives in Florence, overwhelmed by the strange, warm city so different from her home. Amidst the Renaissance architecture and amorous couples, she finds an unexpected love of her own. With his dark, ugly looks, people might stop and stare, wondering what someone like her was doing with someone like him. But he’s the Mickey to her Minnie, and she can fix him—they can fix each other. She feels bound to him, body and soul.
It’s not long before the lying starts. Other women have begun to notice him, and she spirals into paranoia. Soon they’re both cheating and lashing out, and she becomes more and more convinced he’s not merely a violent man: there’s a demon inside him, and inside her too. Their grip on each other is so strong, it might be impossible to break, even after she puts an ocean between them, following another man to New Orleans.
Heady, unsettling, and shockingly funny with its dead-on descriptions of codependent and abusive relationships, The Devil’s Grip takes us on a breathless journey with the shadow selves we can’t escape.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This madcap offering from Wolff (Carnality) zags from the heady sweetness of Florence to the mystical allure of New Orleans. The unnamed narrator, a rootless 30-something Scandinavian woman, has fallen madly in love in Italy with an ugly and cruel man known only as "il pulito" for being neat and tidy. Their relationship is complicated—she is possessive; he beats her and flagrantly cheats—and made even more so by the woman's belief that they are possessed by devils, the only possible explanation she can find for their violent, passionate, codependent behaviors. A chance encounter with another man gives her an opportunity to leave il pulito behind and start over in New Orleans. Unfortunately, a different kind of evil awaits her there, and she is left with only a "worm's-eye-view" of the city, desperate to escape back to Florence and her devilish true love. The off-the-rails plot does not rise to the heights of Wolff's best novels and the people the narrator meets in New Orleans are mere caricatures rather than fully fleshed characters. Still, il pulito and some of the other cast, including the therapist the couple briefly sees, are rendered monstrously and magnificently. It's a provocative addition to Wolff's impressive canon.
